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The Pulpit Message 



Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia, Pa. 



Quenching the Fires of Hate 



Discourse by 

REV. DR. HENRY BERKOWITZ 

Atonement Day 5680— October 4, 1919 



Compliments of 

Mr. Albert Wolf, Pres., Congr. Rodeph Shalom 

12 th and Callowhill Streets 

Philadelphia 






Quenching the Fires of Hate 

Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 
Philadelphia. '' 

Atonement Day 5680 — -Oct. 4, 1919. 

"The leaves of memory seem to make a mournful rustle" 
as we turn their pages on this Atonement Day. There are 
some chapters out of the Past we would be glad to forget 
would but the present permit us. We should be glad to for- 
get all those direful events of the centuries when the fires of 
hate were kindled against us. Like some ghastly nightmare 
happily gone, is the record of those ghoulish scenes of the 
Middle Ages when the pillaging Crusaders raged through 
Germany. France and England and everywhere set the fagot 
to the homes of the Jews and enacted such scenes of cruelty 
as beggar description. 

Lest the memory thereof should die out there are hang- 
ing in the National Gallery at Madrid, in Spain, huge paint- 
ings of scenes of the Spanish Inquisition. There is depicted 
the great assemblage held when Charles II in 1680 culled out 
a holiday in honor of his young bride and kindling the fires 
of hate celebrated an Auto-da-fe by burning at the stake some 
unhappy Jews found guilty of the heresy of practicing the 
Jewish Religion. We were ready to forget the horrors of 
those six long centuries, during which these terrible deeds 
were done, when alas ! the torches of hate kindled in the mod- 
ern world the fires of the Russian Pogroms. 

We thought the climax had passed, when lo ! the mighty 
conflagration of the world war encircled in a ring of fire and 
sword the eleven million Jews of Eastern Europe. And still 
the fires of Revolution burn on in many lands. Their flames 
have spread far and wide. Jews are massacred by Poles ; Ar- 



menians are massacred by Turks ; Koreans are massacred by 
Japs, and Negroes are lynched and burned at the stake by 
Americans. 

The First Cardinal Sin — Murder. 

The ancient Rabbinical teachers summarized all the evil 
doings of men in the simple category of "three cardinal sins." 
These are, "The shedding of blood, adultery and idolatry. But 
the vice of hatred," said they, "outweighs all three." (Mid- 
rash Tehillim, 52.2). We have witnessed more of the shed- 
ding of blood than any generation of the past. A trail of 
blood flowed from that assassination at Sarajevo in June, 
1914, and made its way in mounting torrents across the battle- 
fields of the world — the shambles in which seven millions of 
men were slaughtered. Poison gas and liquid fire, those 
fiendish inventions of modern science, were the fumes and 
flames of these fires of hate. Who will count the hosts of the 
maimed and broken sufferers whose blood was shed in this 
war, of the innocent babes and Avomen, the decrepit and aged 
who are perishing now with typhus and starvation? Oh, 
what a year we have passed through ! The black plague of 
the Middle Ages, sweeping the war zone spread from land to 
land in the form of the mysterious influenza and decimated the 
ranks of our youth. Great God, when will these beastly 
crimes end? How long shall our hearts be wrung with ter- 
ror? Verily it is time for humiliation and prayer and a sum- 
mons to all the world to make atonement for this first great 
cardinal sin. 

The Second Cardinal Sin — Adultery. 

In mentioning the second cardinal sin — adultery — one 
must speak with bated breath. Someone has truthfully said : 
"After all, the greatest harm that Germany did the world 
was to confuse moral issues we thought immovably estab- 
lished." You will recall the shudder than ran through the 
Western world when it came to our knowledge that under 

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the cloak of patriotism, women were coerced or cajoled as 
"War Brides" to violate the seventh commandment. What 
an uncovering of the secret sins took place in our own land 
when the military examinations showed 5.4 per cent, of our 
men diseased. The splendid Welfare Work of the Camp 
Community Service, as described to me by Mrs. Falconer, 
was directed largely against the insidious dangers from the 
women camp followers. We dare not forget in this hour of 
confession the shame of our city when the Federal govern- 
ment at League Island Navy Yard felt compelled to take the 
control of affairs out of the hands of our local Police Depart- 
ment. Indeed our Government since the close of the war has 
begun a new war, here at home, through a nation-Avide health 
crusade for the protection of the generations unborn. 

The Third Cardinal Sin — Idolatry. 

Idolatry, the third cardinal sin, is not obsolete today. 
Alas, for how many Gold is an idol and Greed a Religion ! It 
was Germany's greed for land and power that embroiled the 
world in war. Yet the old bargaining and self-seeking mo- 
tive is asserting itself as strongly among the Allies. Whether 
it be in the larger issues of settling the new boundaries of 
new nations or in the nearer exactions of profiteering and 
rent-gouging, the same old quality of human nature rules. It 
has well been asked: "Is the corporation which charges 100 
per cent, profit in these days of strain a whit less governed 
by the Teutonic philosophy? Are the railroad workers of 
Great Britain who tied up the nation's traffic bringing starva- 
tion and distress to millions, less ruthless of the rights of 
others? Is the retailer who gouges his customers; the 
striker who demands 'less work and more pay' while millions 
of people the world over are crying for succor; the million- 
aire who tries to evade his income tax; are they displaying 
any less greed? Hasn't the Union which breaks its contracts 
put itself into the 'scrap of paper' class? Hasn't the politician 
whose votes weigh heavier than his principles sold his birth- 

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right for a mess of pottage? Haven't they all lost the war 
to Germany?" - 

The Vice of Hatred. 

When the "Hymn of Hate" was sounded in that land mil- 
lions took up the strain and as it were, danced about the fires 
that were kindled. They lighted new fires whose flames 
spread from land to land, from people to people, until the 
whole wide world was set ablaze. The three cardinal sins 
of Murder, Adultery and Idolatry are indeed outweighed by 
the Vice of Hatred, for it is the animating spirit in them all. 
It is the greed that gloats in the robbery of the weak. It is 
the lust that dishonors the innocent. It is the passion that 
desecrates and destroys the sanctity of life. 

The fires of Hate are raging as never before. They 
threaten to consume the world. Those fires must be quenched 
ere it is too late. There is only one force than can quench 
those flames by dominating the human heart and that is the 
force of True Religion. Out of the midst of the fires of Sinai 
thundered the divine mandates: "Thou shalt not murder!" 
"Thou shalt not commit Adultery!" "Thou shalt not covet!" 

True Religion. 

These eternal principles are foundation stones of the 
Temple of the True Religion. Let one of them be moved 
and the structure must fall. The walls of that Temple have 
been built slowly by the steady advance of the great principle 
of human jreedom first announced at Sinai : "I am the Lord 
thy God, who brought thee out of bondage." The supports 
of that Temple are the pillars of Justice and Brotherhood. 
"Thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor and not bear sin 
because of him. Thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear 
any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord !" As 
the great over-ar,ching dome that shall complete that Temple 
the Prophets gave us their glorious precepts for the guidance 

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of human history ; to put an end to war, to establish arbitra- 
tion among the nations and to prosper the world in amity 
and peace. 

As from the midst of Sinai's fires came these the sublim- 
est spiritual ideals the world knows, so from the midst of the 
fires of hate that blazed to the zenith in this world war there 
has come forth the greatest deed in the history of mankind : 
The Covenant of the League of Nations. This is the first 
concerted effort to quench the fires of hate that have blasted 
the world. It aims to put a curb upon the passions of men 
by demanding that Reason be set before Violence. It is the 
solemn pledge of thirty-three nations to establish a court for 
the arbitration of their differences. It is the first sane method 
proposed for reducing armaments and halting the rage of war. 
It is the first attempt to give the weak a chance to be heard 
and their wrongs to be righted. 

A New Covenant. 

Here is the hope and dream of Religion cast into a work- 
able form. What though it be human and imperfect— so too 
was the Constitution of the United States and yet that has 
given us the first real workable democracy. It is hard to 
conceive how men, at least religious men, can seek to thwart 
the great purpose by opposing the League and opposing it 
when they have no alternative to offer. Without the League 
we shall have a renewal of the mad race for armaments with 
the crushing burdens of taxation and the kindling of new 
fires of hate with endless wars to come. 

It is maddening to see how our Senators act. Upon their 
action hangs the welfare of the world. Nero fiddled while 
Rome burned. They orate while the fires of hate devour the 
peoples. We are in the midst of a great industrial revolu- 
tion. Capital and labor stand arrayed. In this great Coven- 
ant of the Nations provision is made, for the first time in his- 
tory, for a great International Industrial Commission through 
which the Governments shall engage to take up and seek "to 

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eliminate those sources of unrest, ill will and animosity which 
are filling the world with trouble. Here is a proposition to 
handle on international lines the great moral issues that lie 
back of the suppression of the White Slave traffic; the sale 
of dangerous drugs ; the prevention of disease ; the beneficent 
labors of the Red Cross and other great constructive meas- 
ures which no one nation alone can, but all unitedly must 
control. 

The Prayer of Words and That of Deeds. 

It is maddening to find petty men flooding the country 
with such literature as the pamphlet of one Eugene Thwing, 
who denounces the League as immoral and irreligious be- 
cause forsooth the sessions of the Paris Conference were not 
opened with daily prayer. Evidently he can only pray in 
words and knows nothing of the greater prayer in deeds. 
Theo. Parker once said : "When the men gathered at Inde- 
pendence Hall in Philadelphia in 1776, rose up to the great 
act of prayer and prayed the Declaration of Independence, 
all the nation said 'Amen.' " And now that the leaders of 
the nations gathered in the Peace Conference in Paris have 
risen to the great act of prayer and prayed the Declaration 
of the Inter-dependence of the Nations — let all the world say 
"Amen." 

True Religion Triumphs. 

In his speech at San Francisco September 17, 1919, Pres- 
ident Wilson uttered out of the depths of his soul, this pro- 
found and stirring peroration : "My fellow citizens. I be- 
lieve in divine Providence. If I did not, I would go crazy. 
If I thought the direction of the disordered affairs of this 
world depended upon our finite endeavor. I should not 
know how to reason my way to sanity. But I do not believe 
there is any body of men, however they concert their power 
or their influence, can defeat this great enterprise, which is 
the enterprise of divine mercy and peace and good will." 
These words of the President strike into this hour with start- 

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ling directness. We call this "The Day of God." It comes 
to lift the burden of doubt and confusion from our souls with 
the reassurance of our faith that "All's well!" There is a 
God who rules and His law of Right and Justice is invulner- 
able. The President says be believes that. Do you? Mis- 
guided and mistaken men, abusing their free will, have tried, 
in each generation, to break the divine laws, but in vain. True 
Religion steadily triumphs over false. True Religion admits 
of but one kind of hate, nay commends it, i.e. hatred of evil. 
''Hate the evil, love the good, establish justice in the gate" is 
the command of the great Prophet, Amos (V-15). The 
Scriptures overflow with this teaching. But they also warn : 
"Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart" (Lev. XIX). 
The great sin of the ages has- been that men hated not the 
evil so much as they hated him they held to be the evil-doer. 
Yet in the long reaches of history in "the thousand years" of 
God that "are but as yesterday when it is past," we behold 
how mercy, good will and peace emerge triumphant. The 
crusades ended ignominiously ; the inquisition died down in 
shame. A single instance will illustrate this truth. July 5th. 
1099, is a dreadful day in Jewish annals. On that day the 
Crusaders at last stormed the walls of Jerusalem and entered 
the holy city. They drove before them the helpless and panic- 
stricken Jews. They barred them into the Synagogues and 
kindling the fires of hate burnt the poor helpless victims to 
death. Contrast with this that glorious Hannukah Day, De- 
cember, 1917, when General Allenby at the head of the Brit- 
ish and Allied forces entered the city of Jerusalem and 
brought to an end the misrule of the Turks. His first care 
was the safety of Jews, Mohammedans and Christians alike. 
Official Proclamation was made that all creeds were to be 
respected alike, the sacred places of all three great Religions 
forever safeguarded. Thus does the great work of redemp- 
tion go steadily onward and the divine law of Retribution 
reveal its workings in human history. 

The sole question of this hour for you and for me is this : 
"Will I help or will I hinder its progress?" The appeal of 

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the Atonement Day is that we use the freedom of will and 
sense of moral responsibility with which God has endowed 
us to work with Him for good and not against Him for evil. 
This is a day of reckoning for each one of us. We have not 
been guilty of any of the three cardinal sins, but we have 
shared in the world's sin and who is there among us that has 
not nursed the fires of hate in his heart and fed the flames 
with the fuels of greed and passion? How often have mercy 
and good will and peace come knocking, but in vain, at the 
doors of our hearts I 

An Ancient Parable. 

An ancient Parable of the Midrash tells of one oppressed 
by the weight of Sin who went forth to seek by what means 
he might find atonement. He»wandered afar and sought out 
the Halls of Learning where Wisdom sat enthroned among 
her disciples. Drawing near, in humility he asked, "Tell me, 
O Wisdom, what shall the sinner do to be purified of his 
sin?" And Wisdom answered: "Evil pursueth the sinner." 
(Prov. 13:21.) He must suffer for his sin. Saddened at heart 
he wandered on. In the open market place a Prophet with 
earnest words was admonishing a throng of hearers. Making 
his way forward he found the moment to ask of the Prophet: 
"What shall the sinner do to be purified?" The Prophet made 
reply: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezek. 18:4.) In 
deep sorrow the wanderer continued his search. He came to 
the Halls of Justice and appealed to the Judge. The Law was 
cited: "Let the sinner bring sacrifice and make restitution." 
(Lev. I :4.) Eagerly the suppliant hastened to fulfill this 
practical measure. In deeds of justice and kindness in gifts 
to the orphan, the widow, the helpless and the indigent, he 
found a new comfort and strength. Still deep in his soul 
rankled the hidden sense of his wrong doings. Passing the 
Temple of God, he entered and seeking out the Priest at the 
altar he ardently asked: "How shall the sinner be purified?" 
Gently the priest made reply : "God doth not seek the death 
of the sinner, but only that he return to Him and live." 
(Ezek. 18:32.) 

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The Parable Applied. 

Let each apply the parable to himself. It cites the pro- 
gressive steps of atonement, shame, remorse, restitution and 
repentance. Wisdom speaks out of the solid experiences of 
life its solemn warning that the inevitable penalty of our sins 
is sulTering. With the first consciousness of sin comes the 
pang of shame. Whether the world finds us out or not the 
haunting sense of the evil is there. Therefore let us be warn- 
ed : "Cease to do evil, learn to do right." (Isaiah i :i6.) Proph- 
ecy — peering beyond mere experience into the mysteries of 
the soul truly admonishes, "The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die." No man has done wrong, but thereby he has dulled and 
deadened his conscience, warped and stifled the nobler im- 
pulses of the soul. Who that comes to realize this vital truth 
for himself, but is filled with keenest remorse. Under the im- 
pulse of shame and remorse we eagerly seek some practical 
means of atonement. 

"Torah," — The Law directs us to practical measures of 
justice and mercy to save our soul life from decay. We need 
to heed them this year more than ever. Cries of distress 
come across the seas that no living soul dare deny. As the 
curtain is lifted from European lands, scenes of appalling and 
tragic suffering are revealed we must all help to relieve. 
Here at home the call for aid is more urgent than ever. We 
are proud of the great advance of our Federation of Charities 
during the past year. But we are scandalized to learn that 
thousands who pledged themselves during the "drive" to 
contribute have not yet honored their pledges. We now 
have 53 institutions to support and no man or woman or 
child can make a true atonement today who is guilty of shirk- 
ing his share of the common duty. To make our atonement 
complete each one of us must go a step further. We must 
sincerely repent. We must heed the divine voice whispering 
in our souls : "Seek me and live ! saith the Eternal." (Amos 
V:6.) "To live" does not mean merely to feed and sleep, to 
toil and rest, to suffer and enjoy. Care for the life of the 

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body, but neglect not the life of the immortal soul ! We cen- 
ter our time, thought and energy upon that which fades and 
perishes instead of upon what is imperishable — upon food 
and drink, money and pleasure, instead of upon that which 
has to do with character, conduct, the ideal and the spiritual. 
We set all other interests first — Religion last. Let us this 
year make a true atonement with God. "He hath told thee, 
O man, what God doth require of thee, only to do justly, to 
love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." (Micah VI :8). 



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